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WHERESGEORGE.COM

Who likes money? I know I do. And I always have. But not in the way you think. Would I tolerate greater quantities in my possession? Absolutely. But that is not my goal. No, what really interests me is the actual paper, the ink, the security measures especially. I love looking at it. Find it fascinating. And am always on the lookout for nuances/irregularities.

And it was in this context that I was delighted to discover on one of the rare actual one-dollar bills I encountered (who uses real cash anymore, seriously?) the red-lettered message “Track this bill at www.WheresGeorge.com.”

Flipping the bill over, there was a red-stamped voice bubble coming from George Washington’s mouth also saying “Track me at www.WHERESGEORGE.com.”

So of course I did. And apparently this is a thing. That’s right. Whole groups of “where’s Georgers” gather at locations across the country to swap and stamp and track these bills as they make their way throughout the U.S. economy.

You go to the site, you type in the serial number, and voila, you can track everywhere the dollar has been. Not only that, but after you enter your information, you can track everywhere it goes going forward.

My instant impulse was to send this one-dollar bill to the most exotic location I could think of: family in the Pacific Northwest, an aunt in Hawaii, or friends abroad. But it tells you right in the website not to do that. You are just supposed to spend it like any regular old dollar and see where it’s natural progression takes it. And so I did. This morning I put it in a vending machine to purchase a Red Bull (for anyone interested, my wife had received it as change at a garage sale in a nearby neighborhood; when I typed it in, it originated in St. Louis and had been “dormant” or at least unreported for almost an entire year since then).

I’m a little bit excited to see where it ends up next. Anyone else ever encountered one of these dollars?